Stuffed Chicken no more! At least not today. Red meat!

Everybody likes chicken. Well, some Yetis and people don't like chickens, and therefore eat lots of chicken. Stuffed chicken seems to be very popular. For instance, see my post about a bunch of different ways to stuff chicken from October in 2007. Well, too bad for you. Today's post is about meat. Meat meat meat meat meat. Red meat of the beef variety that comes from cow type animals. Yetis like the occasional meat dish. Not too often, but once in a while is nice.

I will share with you one of the simplest and best ways to cook a steak. Or at least I think so. So did James Beard. No grills needed, only a iron pan of some sort and a few other ingredients, including red meat. Oh, and the snowdogs like red meat. But they prefer sheep kind of red meat to cow kind.

Pan-fried steak in butter. Just like the French. Yes, the French are pan-fried in butter.

You'll need a nice steak. Preferably at least choice if not prime, perhaps a rib-eye or strip steak, or mmm, T-bone with both the Porterhouse and filet pieces still intact. You could even age them in your fridge, but I'm not going into that here. I'm assuming a 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick steak.
1 tablespoon butter. Or olive oil, but the recipe title says butter.
salt
fresh cracked black pepper

Prepare your steak. Trim off excess fat, rinse, and pat dry. You don't need to go nuts with the trimming of the fat if you have a nice piece. Place your cast-iron or other heavy bottom pan over medium high heat. If it's not a heavy bottom pan this won't work well as a thin pan will not hold enough latent heat to keep the steak cooking evenly. Allow the pan to reach a high temperature. Season the meat on both sides with salt and pepper. Add the butter or oil to the pan and as soon as either the butter begins to foam or the oil shimmers, add the steak. Now, you're probably going to want to move the steak around. DON'T MOVE THE STEAK. Just leave it there for a few minutes, 3-4 for a medium rare 1/2 inch thick or 5-6 for an inch-thick steak. Using tongs, not a fork, shame on you for reaching for that fork, flip your steak. Allow to cook for 3-4 minutes more or 5-6 minutes for a thicker piece.

Use your tongs to take the steak out of the pan and let it rest on a nice warm plate before serving. You can also always make a nice sauce out of the pan juices, but that's a different story. Ok, well, you can add a teaspoon of butter, stir it in the pan with the juices and oil, add some pepper and a pinch of salt, stir constantly and cook for 3-4 minutes, then add 1/2 cup of red wine or beef stock and have a nice pan sauce, but that's just an option. Or sauté some onions or mushrooms. Or top your steak with a nice bit of herbed butter or blue cheese. You get the idea.

This serves about 1 Yeti per 3 steaks, or 1 steak per person. You may want to have about 4 ounces of steak per person as a reasonable portion size, but lots of people eat more steak than that even if it's not good for them to do so.

Yetis have to catch their red meat, so we work for it. Snowdogs too.